


from the wreckage

by sketchy_and_unformed



Series: KakaYama trash [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Drabble, Get Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27603584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sketchy_and_unformed/pseuds/sketchy_and_unformed
Summary: Yamato reacts with pure instinct, a fierce need to cling onto anything that makes him feel like maybe, in time, all of them can be whole again.So far, Kakashi is the only thing that has given him that hope.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Yamato | Tenzou
Series: KakaYama trash [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018075
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	from the wreckage

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through the whole anime / manga to be safe. Warning: written in present tense

They’re safe. They survived. They can go home.

In a way, it’s worse.

The adrenaline of battle burns out quickly and exhaustion takes its place. Kakashi honestly doesn’t know how he’s still able to stand on his own two feet. He should be dead from chakra depletion at least three times over. It can only be the boost from Naruto—and Kurama’s—chakra.

And, perhaps, Obito’s.

With no more need to fight, all that’s left is the grief.

He lost Obito, _again_. He even lost his memories of him as the brightest and best of all of them.

Obito killed Minato. He did.

Kakashi stumbles, tripping over rubble, bumping up against Gai whose arm is tight around his neck. On his other side Sakura reaches out to steady him and they form a swaying line, her hand grasping Gai’s arm, Lee on Gai’s other side weeping silently. Gai is barely conscious and his legs drag uselessly but he is alive, against all odds, even against nature.

They make their slow way towards the Valley of the End, towards Naruto.

***

Waking up from the dream is the hardest part of all. He doesn’t want to let it go. If he had a voice, he’d scream.

Yamato wakes up in the dirt, the dead vines of the Divine Tree falling away to rot. All around him others are waking up in a similar way.

There’s relief in the air, but there is also confusion buzzing loudly like a cloud of insects.

And beneath the confusion, despair.

They’ve all lost something to the Tsukiyomi, even if it’s only the time they spent trapped there, unable to fight, unable to contribute.

Useless.

Yamato dreamed that he was wanted, loved and admired, and losing that dream is the sharpest loss of all.

***

It’s all too much of a mess for them to sort through, any of them. People come together in sobbing clusters, buildings lie in ruins and everywhere is the stench of decaying plant matter, the ground littered with shredded tendrils and roots.

Konoha is a wreck but still standing. Its people—most of them—remain.

It’s probably a miracle but in the immediate aftermath, it doesn’t feel like much of one.

Keeping busy blots out the thoughts and feelings for a while and Kakashi is grateful for it. He pitches in wherever he can, rebuilding and directing.

The comforting, he leaves to others better suited to the task.

It’s two days before he remembers Yamato.

***

They find each other at last on the Hokage monument. Yamato stands at the apex, looking out over the village. It’s sunset and the sky is smeared orange and gold ahead of him. He turns when he senses Kakashi’s chakra and Kakashi’s legs give out. He drops to his knees with the overwhelming force of his relief.

“You’re alive,” he croaks.

Yamato sighs and flops to the ground, cross-legged. “I wonder,” he says.

Kakashi scrambles over to him, propelled by all of his guilt and his regrets. “I should have been there. I’m so sorry. It’s all just been…”

“I know,” Yamato says softly, looking down at his hands. “I can’t imagine.”

“But you,” Kakashi says desperately.

Yamato meets his pleading gaze and smiles. “Your eyes. They suit you, senpai.”

Senpai. As if he has any right to that honorific anymore. He abandoned his comrade, his friend. He didn’t look for him. He was too busy fighting his own war.

“I’m sorry,” he says again and now that he’s away, finally away from the work of rebuilding, he feels that he could fall apart. Every wound is still too raw, there’s been no time for the shock or the trauma to take root but if he lets them, they will.

If there’s one person, though, who won't judge him for breaking down, it’s surely Yamato.

Kakashi takes a deep, shuddering breath, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.

“I should have come for you,” he manages. “You never should have been there in the first place. It’s my fault that you–”

Yamato shakes his head vehemently. “No. We won the war. The only blame is on our enemies.”

Kakashi breathes carefully, holding back his tears. “Do you believe that?”

Yamato’s smile is as fragile as he feels. “I’m trying to. I have to.”

***

In the end, Yamato breaks first. Over a quiet dinner in his apartment, the whole team together, he excuses himself and walks calmly into the bedroom and closes the door. The shaking starts with his hand on the doorknob and gets worse. He finds the bed before he falls and when he starts to sob he hears the sheets tearing in the grip of his fists.

Kakashi lets himself into the room quietly, after he’s cried himself out for now and is sitting on the floor, his back to the wall. He sinks down beside him.

“They went home,” he says, and Yamato nods. His head feels too heavy and he’s wrung out from crying but he’s still alive and it seems like he’ll stay that way, at least for now.

“You’re still here,” he says, and Kakashi smiles.

“I am.”

Something inside him lets go, then. Yamato sees it the second before he tips his head back against the wall and his breath catches on a sob. Yamato lays his hand on Kakashi’s and Kakashi seizes it, holding far too tightly but Yamato doesn’t mind.

“We made it,” Kakashi says, voice low and thick. “But I still feel like I failed.”

Yamato swallows hard against his answering guilt. It was his cells that strengthened the army. Every death that those clones caused, he had a hand in it. He might forgive himself eventually, but he won’t ever forget.

Kakashi sees it in his eyes and his own turn fierce. “Not you, Tenzō. You were a victim.”

“I’m a shinobi,” he says, closing his eyes. He’s still so tired. “I’m supposed to protect people.”

Kakashi pulls him into his arms before he can fight it, not that he would have.

“We’re all shinobi,” Kakashi says against his hair. “Who was protecting you?”

He feels safe with Kakashi, as though he’s realising for the first time that they’ve been through the same trauma, that they can share in each other’s pain. He turns his face against his chest and stops fighting the grief that he feels for himself, the anger at what he was put through. Until now he’d hidden that behind his concerns for everyone else but Kakashi is right; they’re all shinobi together and every one of them has suffered, Yamato included.

In the dream, he worked alongside Kakashi as his equal. As his friend.

He almost misses it when Kakashi kisses his hair, barely feels his lips through the mask, but he notices when Kakashi realises what he’s done, tenses and draws carefully away.

Yamato reacts with pure instinct, a fierce need to cling onto anything that makes him feel like maybe, in time, all of them can be whole again.

So far, Kakashi is the only thing that has given him that hope.

Yamato chases Kakashi’s movement, follows him back against the wall and presses his mouth against where his should be. Kakashi sucks in a sharp breath then drags his mask down and kisses him back. His lips are chapped and dry and he takes Yamato’s face between careful, gentle hands. Yamato pulls away and they study each other’s eyes.

Kakashi wets his lips with his tongue. “How long have you been wanting to do that?” he asks.

Yamato reddens and looks away. “A pretty long time.”

Kakashi’s fingers twitch, then stroke his cheek. “I wish you’d told me.”

“It wasn’t my place,” Yamato says, risking a glance at Kakashi’s face. His mask is caught around his chin and he’s smiling, a small, private expression that’s a glimmer in his dark eyes and a lift at the corners of his mouth.

“And now?”

“I had to,” he blurts out, blush still burning his skin. “I mean, I couldn’t not do it. I mean,” he clenches his fist, frustrated at his own inability to articulate what drove his actions. He takes a breath and tries again. “I had a lot of reasons not to kiss you before the war, but none of them really matter now.”

Kakashi brushes one hand down Yamato’s neck to rest on his shoulder. “No, I don’t suppose that they do.”

Kakashi starts the next kiss, inching forward like he’s giving Yamato the time and space to change his mind but he won’t. Their lips meet sweetly, chastely. The only sounds in the room are their gentle breaths. It’s peaceful.

Yamato pulls back and this time Kakashi follows him. His arm curves around Yamato’s back and he supports his body down onto the rug. It takes time to sort the tangle and clash of their legs and knees but they have time. Kakashi presses Yamato’s hands down on either side of his head and kisses him slowly, unhurried like they have a whole lifetime ahead of them and maybe they do, now. He gives himself over to it, Kakashi’s body covering his, weighing him down like an anchor to the here and now, the past forgotten.

“Tenzō.”

Kakashi breathes his name like a promise.


End file.
